The flaky filmmaker for whom John Edwards risked his political future and his family is a former “party girl” who went from narcotics to nirvana.
Rielle Hunter’s résumé also includes actress, producer, New Age blogger – and now, home wrecker.
A Florida native, the 44-year-old divorcée grew up in a well-to-do household but is now deep in debt, a source told The Post.
Hunter, born Lisa Druck, first turned up in New York in the 1980s, where she hooked up with novelist Jay McInerney.
“She used to be a real party girl,” he told Page Six. “When she wasn’t out at nightclubs, she was taking acting classes.
“We dated for only a few months, but in that period I spent a lot of time with her and her friends, whose behavior intrigued and appalled me to such an extent that I ended up basing a novel on the experience.”
It was called “Story of My Life.”
In 2005 she caught the eye of her soon-to-be politico paramour at the Regency Hotel bar. She was out with a group, drinking “like an old cougar fool,” a source said. “She’s an idiot, a fool, a moron, a faux guru, but not mean-spirited.”
A year later, Edwards’ political action committee paid $100,000 in a four-month period to a newly formed company run by Hunter, although she had virtually no experience making campaign films, ABC News reported.
Hunter directed production of four Web videos showing the presidential wannabe in supposedly candid moments as well as delivering a public address on morality.
He said he was for it.
Edwards denied yesterday that he ever loved her.
But at parties she would announce to people she didn’t even know that she was having an affair with the senator, adding she was “stressed out” but they were “in love,” another source said.
Edwards would gossip about other candidates. “It was amazing what he confided to her. Very inappropriate stuff and not provable,” the source said.
She later spent time in California where her blog says she went to “get away from New York because I was doing so many drugs,” the Huffington Post Web site said.
On the coast, she wrote, acted in and produced a short comedy flick called “Billy Bob and Them.”
Her New Age blog, recently taken down, contains insights like: “Who knows why? Who cares? . . . Oh my God the comedy of it all,” according to the Web site Jossip.
She was married for about a decade to a man named Kip Hunter, who bears a striking resemblance to Edwards. Hunter’s father, Alexander, was the DA in Boulder, Colo., during the probe into the slaying of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.
Her ex, contacted by The Post, said only, “I love your paper.”